


Stumble

by Arsenic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-11
Updated: 2006-09-11
Packaged: 2020-11-26 22:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20937476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: Challenge: "Vengeance is very sweet," Snape breathed at Black.  "How I hoped I would be the one to catch you." - Snape, Sirius, Harry, any combo





	Stumble

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hpshortfics

Harry had hunted Voldemort because of things that were out of his control. Prophecies and grand epic things that Harry didn't much think about because on a horcrux to horcrux basis, they were surprisingly unimportant.

He had hunted Snape because the need to avenge Sirius, Dumbledore, _himself_ had been so strong that he could often feel it just beneath his fingertips, closer and more powerful than his wand. He had hunted Snape for every new patch in Remus's clothing, and for the sound of his mother's screams.

It was almost an accident, the way Harry stumbled over Snape in the wake of killing Voldemort. Without his horcruxes the man had been surprisingly. . .mortal, and the Killing Curse had taken no more or less effort than it would have with anyone else. Not that Killing Curses didn't require a fair amount of effort on Harry's part.

As bad as he wanted to be, Harry really just wasn't cut out for this type of thing.

After every encounter with Death Eaters where Harry would have to fight dirty, would have to allow curses to flow from his mind to his fingers without even the byway of his mouth in between, Hermione would press her lips to his forehead and ask, "You still in there?"

The only times he ever lost himself was when he thought of Snape.

Snape, over whom Harry tripped, literally _tripped_, in his exhaustion from building up the emotion necessary for the Killing Curse. Harry looked down, saw the crumpled, twisted lengths of black cloth practically joined with black hair, and clutched his wand so tightly that he could feel each grain of wood against his palm.

Harry expected the emotion crucial to carrying out this last act of willed destruction to come so very, very easily to him. Only he opened his mouth to say the words. . .and realized he'd had to open his mouth. Bewildered by this sudden loss of wordless magic, Harry stepped back a bit.

Two black eyes fluttered open. Harry watched Snape slowly focus in on the man standing above him. He watched as all emotion, even utter weariness drained from those eyes, and all that was left was a particularly harsh form of resignation.

Harry brought his wand up from where it had dropped--with his hand--to his side. "Give me one reason not to."

Snape stared silently up at Harry. Harry blinked, trying not to see what he was seeing in those deadened, black, all too familiar eyes. Harry tried not to hear his own voice giving himself a reason, his own thirteen year-old voice reminding Sirius and Remus that the last thing James and Lily would have wanted was for them to become murderers.

Harry's eyes flickered to Voldemort. Harry was already a murderer.

Suddenly, Snape laughed. Or at least, he managed to half-heartedly smirk in the way he always had when he was about to deny Harry any points. "Still haven't learned how to close your mind, Potter?"

Harry frowned. He had learned. Voldemort hadn't been able to hear him at all. Harry redoubled his Occlumency efforts and reset his mind to thinking of the curse. Snape's eyes shut down once again and Harry knew, _knew_ he had heard, despite Harry's best efforts. "How are you doing that?"

"You have no skills in the area of-"

"I do. You can feel them." Harry was still the one standing with a wand, and Snape was still the one on the ground, wandless.

Snape shook his head slightly but didn't argue with Harry. Instead he said, "You're not a murderer. Not yet. Self-defense is something else entirely."

Harry re-gripped his wand. "You're a murderer."

Softly, Snape said, "That I am."

Again Harry felt as though everything were dissonant inside his head, that all he could hear was Sirius's guilt at not having been with Harry and his parents that Halloween night. Misguided guilt.

Harry struggled for another moment to regroup, to find the curse within him. Now it wouldn't even come to his lips. "Vengeance," he snarled at Snape, "is _not_ sweet."

Snape's eyes rolled with some effort to where Voldemort lay. "No. That it's not."


End file.
